Word soon got around that you could always get steaks in these places. Furthermore, there was something bohemian in going to them, because you could rub shoulders with newspapermen and maybe once in awhile see a famed columnist or cartoonist.
Then there were the caricatures on the walls, often drawn by needy members of the craft in payment of booze, and the sawdust on the floor.
New York is a town that follows the leader. Locals began taking their out-of-town friends. Pretty soon you needed reservations and still stood in line, and dingy old saloons boasted doormen, while the journalists who had made the places couldn't wedge in.
The places caught on, and even after the shortages eased the once lowly gin mills continued to draw the carriage trade, considered by everyone in "the know" as the last word in "steakeasies."
Among them are the Palm, Second Avenue and 45th Street, known to initiates as Ganzi's; the Montreal, 45th and Second, known as Colombo's; Pietro's, at 45th and Third, once called The Key Club, because during Prohibition you used your own private key instead of a card; the Pen and Pencil and the Scribes in 45th between Second and Third; and Danny's, the Press Box, and Chris Cella's, between Third and Lexington.
A recent development on the East Side is the looming prominence of Lexington Avenue as a "Main Street." Lexington's rise can be traced in an inverse ratio to Broadway's decline, as the better class of visitor began to select East Side hotels and do his dining and dancing nearby.
Before the war--say a dozen years ago--Broadway drew a different type of tourist. Then he was a buyer, with fire in his eyes, desire in his blood, and all tabs paid for by the manufacturers and salesmen who were out to give him a better time than did their competitors.
Other visitors were well-heeled Rotarians from the interior and their ladies, here to see the sights and shows and do some shopping.
These people of ample means were Broadway's leaven, keeping it gay and prosperous.
Both large groups dried up during the war. Their places were taken by millions of gaping and gawking servicemen from everywhere, here on leave or passing through, and other millions of defense-plant workers from nearby Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut communities, their pockets bulging with unaccustomed wealth, for the spending of which they had no talent.